NASA Rediscovers India’s Lost Chandrayaan-1. Here Is All You Should Know About India’s Lunar Probe

Eight years after ISRO lost hope and considered it lost, India’s first lunar spacecraft, Chandrayaan-1, has been re-discovered by NASA’s radars. The American space agency announced on Friday that it’s radar’s have rediscovered the Chandrayaan-1.

Here is all you need to know about Chandrayaan-1

Launched in 2008

In India’s first lunar probe, ISRO had launched Chandrayaan-1 launched in October 2008 and was operational until 2009.

It entered Lunar orbit and made India fourth country to do so

Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had announced Chandrayaan-1 project as a major boost to India’s space ambitions in 2003.

India developed technology to explore the Moon.

After it was launched on 22 October 2008, on 8 November 2008, the Moon Impact Probe separated from the Chandrayaan orbiter and struck the South Pole which made India fourth country to place its flag on the moon.

Chandrayaan searched for water on the Moon

Soon, it entered the Moon’s orbit, the probe hit near the crater Shackleton which resulted in the ejection of the sub-surface soil that could be analysed for the presence of Lunar water ice. It was intended to survey the lunar surface for two years to produce complete knowledge about the chemical characteristics and three-dimensional topography.

But by August 2009, it developed technical glitches

By August 2009, the orbiter started witnessing technical issues which included failure of the star sensors. And due to poor thermal shielding, the Chandrayaan stopped sending radio signals on 28 August 2009. ISRO speculated that it might have crashed on moon’s surface.

It operated for 312 days against the intended tenure of 2 years, but the mission was called a success as it achieved 95% of its planned objectives. Speculation was rife at Isro then that it had crashed on the moon.

The father of India’s moon mission, Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, said, “To be declared lost and then found after eight years is a great accomplishment.” Chandrayaan-1 was our first interplanetary mission and I am delighted that it has been found.”

According to Nasa, the main challenge in detecting Chandrayaan-1 was on account of its size; the spacecraft is very small, a cube of about 1.5 metres on each side, about half the size of a smart car. It has not been transmitting signals. According to Nasa, to find the spacecraft 3.80 lakh km away, the JPL team used its 70-metre antenna at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California.